


Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?

by natsinator



Category: Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu | Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Genre: M/M, galacticsantas2k20
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28323351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natsinator/pseuds/natsinator
Summary: Poplan doesn't see snow very often, so when he does, it sticks out in his memory. He remembers two particular snowy nights very clearly.Written for galacticsantas2k20 for @debaucherry_ on twitter.
Relationships: Ivan Konev/Olivier Poplin
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10





	1. The Heroic Weather Conditions of the Universe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meowdar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meowdar/gifts).



Olivier Poplin had conquered his first enemy fighter and his first woman in the same year. He had been seventeen, and he had considered it to be the best year of his life, by a wide margin. He became certain that, mathematically speaking, the only way to improve subsequent years was to increase each time the number of both Imperial Valkyries, and living Alliance women. 

This was a conviction that he gave voice to whenever the opportunity arose, which was to say, whenever he was off duty and drunk with a new group of people. Or an old group of people who hadn’t quite figured out how to shut him up yet. In this particular moment, Poplin was not drunk, though he wanted to be, and he was with a group of people who were not particularly in the mood for his banter. In fact, everyone was quite upset.

This was because they were stranded in an airport, a situation which takes even the most cheerful men and turns them into human shaped balloons, inflated with frustration. You could put a pin into one and hear air come out in a steady whine of, “When will the runway be clear again?” and “If they were going to leave us here, they should have let us stay in town.”

Poplin agreed with that sentiment, not least because, in the off hours after days of training, he had gone to a bar and made the acquaintance of a very friendly woman, who had laughed at his jokes and sucked his dick, which pretty much made up for the fact that he had been stuck in training for a month, instead of either on leave or out in space and adding to his tally of Valkyries. 

He had come into the Fleet as fresh and willing recruit, but he was just good enough at shooting down the enemy, or not dying, or not making his superiors in his squadron hate him, that he had been recommended to become a pilot-officer, which required training for all the things that they didn’t teach you as just an enlisted man. Even after having gone through the month long course, Poplin couldn’t say that he knew precisely why this new knowledge was important, but he had a new pin on his uniform now, so he must have learned enough to warrant it. 

He and the rest of his cohort were meant to be shipping back out to rejoin the Second Fleet, but the cruiser they were meant to be boarding had been delayed with some sort of technical problem, and in the time that it took for a substitute cruiser to volunteer to take them aboard, a violent snowstorm had descended upon the air and spaceport from which they were supposed to depart. Poplin stood at the huge windows, his breath fogging up in front of him, and looked out at the runway lights glinting off the snow, which was coming down too heavily and too cold for even the heated runway to keep clear. No shuttles would risk approaching, landing, taking off, or flying in general in this kind of weather.

Behind him, the grumbling continued, interspersed with a few of the more gregarious and faux cheerful pilot-officers trying to break out cards or other group diversions to pass the time. It wasn’t working. The more practical among them had already realized that there would be no going anywhere until morning at the earliest, so had bunched up their duffel bags for pillows, taken off their coats to use as blankets, and had spread themselves out across the floor, kicking at the ankles of anyone who came close enough loudly enough to disturb their uncomfortable rest.

Aside from a few airport staff who had remained to babysit the pilots, and whoever the unlucky fellows were in the control tower, the airport was deserted. It was a small place, just the one runway, and most of the flights in and out were to service the training school.

The temperature was so low that standing even near the windows tended to sap the heat right out of the body, but Poplin was plenty warm, wearing his uniform coat. He had never seen snow like this before, not coming down near-horizontally in the shrieking wind. He had grown up right on the coast, so the rare snows of his childhood had been heavy, ponderous flakes that turned to slush on the roads and turned to rain in the sky about ten minutes after they fell. So, this was a novel experience, but not novel enough to counteract the boredom of being trapped. And hungry.

They had been promised a dinner when they got into orbit, and when it had become clear that they were not going to make it into orbit any time soon, the airport staff had distributed pizza and soda from the last kiosk before closing down for the night, but that was not enough to tide Poplin over, nor was the smashed chocolate bar that had been in the bottom of his bag. He had to wonder if anyone would miss him if he snuck out to a nearby restaurant, or the house of the girl he knew. She wouldn’t mind him fishing in her fridge, he was sure. And he could be back by morning, no problem at all.

Poplin glanced around at the other guys. Those who weren’t trying to sleep were boredly looking at their phones, or reading magazines taken from the racks of the kiosk behind them; the airport staff had said it was okay, so long as they put them all back later. Poplin rather doubted that that would happen, especially as he saw one guy with a pen going through crossword puzzle after crossword puzzle.

“I’m going to see if there’s any good vending machines in this place,” Poplin announced, looking around at the group, trying to gauge if anyone cared where he went. No one seemed to, except for the man doing crosswords— Konev, Poplin remembered, putting a name to the face— who glanced up.

The officer in charge of the group didn’t care, at least, so Poplin abandoned his bag there on the ground and wandered away from the group, heading down the long airport hallway, dimly lit, since only the one terminal they had been assigned was lit up. All the stores had their lights off, but behind the pulled-down chain gates, the refrigerators and kiosks were all lit and glowing neon hues, light spilling eerily out onto the dark carpet. That, combined with the ghostly light coming in from the snowy scene outside all the huge windows, made shadows dance confusingly on the ground in front of him, and the lit group behind him looked like a beacon of safety: home port. Poplin turned away from it all, though, and continued down the hall, then quietly slipped down into the stairwell that would take him to the first floor.

There was no one watching the main entrance to the airport except for the cameras, and Poplin doubted that anyone watching the cameras would be watching for him to leave, specifically, so he felt fine sticking his hands in his pockets and waltzing out the main doors, having to shove them open quite hard against the wind.

He was up to his ankles in blowing snow immediately, but he did not let this faze him. Poplin whistled cheerfully as he took step after step through the snow, lifting his knees high like he was doing a comical march, though he didn’t take his hands out of his pockets. By the time he reached the edge of the parking lot and got to the main road— a journey that had taken him longer than expected— his nose was running and his ears were burning with cold. But he thought about the fact that the town proper was only about a kilometer away, and how he’d walked much further than that for much stupider reasons on other days, so it would be extremely stupid to give up now.

As soon as Poplin stepped out onto the main road, the streetlights above him flickered once, then went out completely, plunging him into a semi-darkness. The airport behind him was dark for a moment, but then their emergency generator must have kicked on, and the ATC tower and runway lights lit up again like a beacon, the light glittering and reflecting off the snow that was still rushing down from the sky, making the whole area brighter than it had any right to be, by Poplin’s estimate.

Still, a little lack of light wasn’t going to deter him either, and he began trudging along the main road, the lights vanishing into the swirling snow behind him, leaving only vague outlines of bare trees ahead. The road itself was completely invisible as well, covered as it was in snow, and so Poplin stumbled a few times, one foot slipping off the side of the road into the runoff ditch. 

He wasn’t sure how far he had gone, and he wasn’t sure how far he had to go, but he was now very tempted to give up. His face was numb with cold, and his eyelashes were crusted with snowflakes. his feet were frozen in his shoes, which were not made for this type of all-weather journey. He paused for a moment, breathing on his hands , trying ineffectually to warm them up, and to redirect some of his hot breath onto his face to warm his frozen nose, as well. 

“Poplin!” 

The voice was muffled, sound not travelling very far through the snow, but Poplin recognized it. It was one of the guys in his training group, the one who had paid attention when he said he was going somewhere, Konev.

“Poplin!” Konev yelled again.

Poplin turned, and he saw a light bobbling through the darkness towards him.

“Hey, Konev!” Poplin yelled back. “Over here!” He waved his arm, a motion that he regretted immediately, because it sent a flurry of snow up his sleeve.

Konev picked up his pace, running towards Poplin, coming close enough that they could see each other distinctly. Konev had his uniform scarf wrapped around his face, covering his nose and ears both, and with his beret unfolded to cover as much of his head as possible, his blond hair was barely peeking out. Only his eyes were visible. 

“What the hell are you doing out here, man?” Konev asked.

“Going to town,” Poplin said. “You going to report me for going AWOL?”

Even though his expression was hidden behind his scarf, Konev seemed nonplussed. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah.” He paused for a second. “Want to join me? I’m sure there’s some bar open. Could get drinks.” Although he was trying to be nonchalant, his teeth were chattering a bit.

“How far do you think town is from here?”

“Maybe another half a kilometer.”

“How far do you think you’ve gone?”

Poplin considered how long he had been out walking for. “Most of the way. A kilometer, at least.”

“You’ve never walked in snow, have you?”

“Nah,” Poplin agreed. “But it’s not so bad. I’m getting where I need to go.”

“You’ve barely gone a quarter of the way, man,” Konev said. “And I don’t want to start out tomorrow morning with somebody finding your frozen corpse out on the side of the road because you wanted a drink in the middle of the worst snowstorm of the year.”

“Well, a drink wasn’t my plan until you showed up.”

“What was your plan?”

“Gonna meet up with a girl.”

“You’d chase pussy across the tundra?”

“You know it,” Poplin said. “You want to get a drink with me or not?”

“Jesus, no,” Konev said. “I’m gonna drag you back to the airport.”

“Don’t be a spoilsport,” Poplin said. “How’d you even know I was out here?”

“No one announces where they’re going unless they’re trying to create an alibi,” Konev pointed out. “When you didn’t come back, I figured maybe I should make sure— well, no one else seemed to be paying attention.”

“So, what, you followed my footprints?”

“There’s no footprints, man.” And, indeed, even the fresh indentations from Konev’s shoes were being immediately swallowed by the driven snow. “I just saw that the front door had been opened because some snow blew in and melted on the carpet, and there was only one direction that you could reasonably go. So I headed that same way, just to make sure you weren’t gonna die in the snow.”

“I’m not gonna die in the snow,” Poplin said. “It would take a lot more than that to kill me.”

“Yeah, your own stupidity,” Konev said. “I’m rescuing you. Come on.”

“I don’t want to be rescued,” Poplin huffed. “Did you tell anyone where you were going?”

“I don’t want to get reported for being AWOL, either, but if you don’t come back with me, I will tell everyone exactly what you are doing.”

“Oh, come on, what’s it to you?”

“Man, I’ve seen people get frostbite and shit before,” Konev said. “I grew up in the north. It’s not pretty. If you want to lose your fingers and toes and ears so bad, I can’t stop you.”

“So you’ve downgraded from ‘death’ to ‘a little frostbite on my ears.’”

“Poplin, this is stupid. Come back with me.”

“I want to get a drink in town,” Poplin said. “It’s really not that far.”

“You’re really not going to listen to me?”

“Nah,” Poplin said.

Konev shook his head, some of the snow tumbling off his beret onto the ground. “Am I the only pilot who doesn’t have a deathwish?”

“Probably. You have to be crazy, to keep flying,” Poplin pointed out. “A little stroll, that’s nothing.”

“Take the flashlight, at least,” Konev said with a sigh. He handed over a heavy security guard flashlight.

“Where’d you get this?”

“I told one of the airport staff the lights were out in the toilets, and asked to borrow it.”

“Hah, nice.” Poplin took it, pulling his sleeve down over his hand so that the cold metal didn’t sting so much when he held it. “Have a nice night, Konev,” he said.

“Yeah,” Konev said. “Don’t die.”

Poplin saluted cheekily, as best he could with the flashlight in hand, anyway, and started trudging his way towards town again. He glanced behind him, and saw Konev walking the other direction, vanishing into the snow, shoulders hunched.

The snow weighed on Poplin’s every step, and the wind seemed to sap his strength. He was freezing cold, and he was definitely beginning to regret his stubborn refusal to turn around. The flashlight only made him more demoralized, to be honest, because it lit up the snowflakes in front of him and showed him exactly how much it was snowing, and exactly how hard the wind was blowing, and that the road never stopped stretching out before him and vanishing into dark nothingness.

This was stupid. Konev was right, even if Poplin didn’t like to admit it. Maybe he could go back, and pretend like it had been his idea to come back to the airport after all, and not Konev’s. Save some face that way.

Poplin turned around and started to head back. He had barely made it ten steps into this new resolve when sound rang out again.

“Poplin, wait for me!” Konev yelled. He was running through the snow towards Poplin, panting a little with the exertion.

“What are you doing now?”

“I couldn’t let you go alone. That’s like, rule number one,” Konev said.

“I was turning around,” Poplin muttered. 

Konev laughed, a bright sound even though it was muffled by the scarf over his nose. “Man… This is so stupid. Come on.”

“You don’t have to make fun of me,” Poplin huffed.

Konev just shook his head, then grabbed his sleeve, pulling him back towards the airport.

The return journey felt faster. Maybe it was because of the company, even though they didn’t talk, or because Poplin realized now just how far he had actually made it away from the airport (not very, as it turned out.)

They snuck guiltily back in through the main doors, the place even dimmer now that only the emergency lights were on. The warm air inside the building made Poplin’s frozen face burn.

“We have to dry off our clothes somehow,” Konev said. “I don’t want to get in trouble for sneaking outside.”

“Yeah,” Poplin agreed, though he was wincing from thawing out, and rapidly melting snow all over the carpet. “We could pretend like we just went outside a little, and weren’t trying to go to town.”

“Only one of us was doing that particular idiotic thing,” Konev said.

“Hey! You had decided to come with me!”

Konev just shook his head. “Come on, we can at least get the worst of the snow off with paper towels before it melts in.”

Poplin followed him into a nearby bathroom, and they pulled off their snow-encrusted jackets and pants, standing barefoot and in their shirtsleeves and underwear, brushing the snow off onto the floor, wringing the bottoms of their pant legs out, then rubbing them with paper towels as they could. When none of this was completely effective, and the prospect of putting the damp uniform back onto his body disgusted Poplin, they gave up and just draped their wet clothes over the hot radiator underneath the bathroom window. 

“Ware we going to do if someone finds us in here?” Poplin grumbled.

“Being caught in our underwear would give us a better excuse for having wandered away from the group than wanting to go on a stroll to town. They probably wouldn’t even notice our clothes are wet. Punishment’s certainly less bad.”

“Yeah, but then everybody’d think we’re gay or something.”

Konev shrugged. “Nobody’s going to look for us.”

“If you say so,” Poplin said. 

Konev sat down on the floor, warming his hands near the radiator. Poplin joined him after a second, figuring it was better than standing until his clothes were dry.

“Why’d you decide to turn around?” Konev asked after a second.

“Got bored of walking.”

“Hah. Alright.”

“It’s not like you convinced me.”

“I would hope that you don’t have to be convinced to save your own skin,” Konev said, then yawned. “But pilots are as crazy as they come, so maybe.”

“You can’t win a dogfight by pussyfooting out of the way,” Poplin argued. “You have to commit and shoot your shot, you know?”

“I’m aware,” Konev said. His calm voice somehow irritated Poplin.

“And how many Valkyries do you have?”

“Is quantity the most important thing to you?”

Poplin sniffed. “Not sure how else you’d measure it.” Unable to resist the opportunity to brag, he said, “Forty-three.”

Konev raised a silent eyebrow.

“Oh, and you’re not going to tell me yours?”

“If you want this to be a dick measuring contest, you’ll have to take off your underwear instead of just talking about it.”

“Oh, come on,” Poplin said. “Now I need to know.”

“Sixty-eight,” Konev said.

“Liar.”

“I can show you my service record when we get into orbit,” Konev said with a yawn. “If it matters to you that much.”

“How?” Poplin demanded.

Konev closed his eyes and leaned back against the tile wall. The snowy light coming in through the window was soft on his face. “I don’t get caught up in chasing things,” Konev said. “You can be a lot more efficient that way.”

“Well, where’s the fun in that?” Poplin demanded.

“Better than the fun in ‘funeral.’” Konev’s voice turned into a mumble by the end of the sentence; perhaps he was more tired than Poplin was, and Poplin was no longer inclined to talk, forced to stew on the difference in their numbers. After a while, he felt like he had something witty to say, but when he turned towards Konev, he saw that he had fallen asleep, jaw slack, head leaning sideways.

“You’re no fun,” Poplin said quietly, but without someone to talk to, he leaned against the wall quietly himself, waiting for their clothes to dry. When he woke up, he wasn’t sure how much later, it was because the moonlight was coming through the window— the snow had stopped— and Konev was pushing his head off his shoulder.

“We should get back,” Konev said. “Our clothes are dry now.”


	2. Flowers Which Won't Survive the First Frost

Iserlohn was a great place, except for the fact that after a few months of living there, things kept breaking that no one knew how to fix. Sure, there weren’t that many differences between plumbing in the Alliance and the Empire, so they could handle clogged toilets, but when some long buried piece of computer code encountered an error, no one could figure out how to get the lights in the hallways out of “twilight” mode for almost two weeks.

In the beginning, this had been funny, because it certainly made even the drabbest corridors feel like more ideal spots for an amorous tryst, and so some of the ladies of Iserlohn had been more eager to pretend that certain corners were more isolated than they really, technically were. But it got old as soon as the novelty wore off, especially as the feeling of constantly having to adjust his eyes between the dim corridors and the bright white lights of the offices and homes in the fortress. Walking through the gloom for fifteen minutes and then arriving into the brightest fucking room he had ever seen… It was annoying.

Someone had figured out how to fix it, but it had taken time. It wasn’t like they could get on the phone with Odin and ask for the tech specs on their captured fortress. Nobody had left user manuals lying around. Like, what if some spy could use the light control system to shut down the Thor Hammer. Yeah, right. Poplin had to laugh at that thought.

The lights not working right had only been a portent of things to come, though, because while lights were relatively harmless and uncomplicated, the weather system that controlled vast parts of the fortress— from the greenhouses that made it self-sustaining, to the central “outdoor” area that made it feel like a planet, to the essential climate control and ventilation in every other space occupied by people— was labyrinthine, esoteric, complex, and any engineer’s worst nightmare. And it had been showing signs that something was wrong with it.

Like, sometimes you’d walk into a room and you’d find a fine layer of grit all over everything, like a filter had blown and was sending all its particulate matter through the winding tunnels and out of this air vent. Or sometimes, there’d be a great sucking wind so strong in a hallway that you’d think that it opened onto pure vacuum, and all the air was trying to get out, but that wouldn’t make sense in the dead center of the fortress. 

Things like that had been going on for a while, and it was setting everyone on edge. He’d hear people talking about ghosts in the machine and “what if it stops filtering the air, and we die of carbon monoxide poisoning?”

When someone had said that in one of the bars in front of Poplin and Konev, Poplin had been nodding along with the worry, though only in an abstract sense, as he was very drunk at the moment, but Konev had put his hand on the guy’s shoulder and said, “Do you really think Admiral Yang wouldn’t evacuate us? And then there’d be a way to fix the issue, I’m sure.”

Konev was just good at calming people down like that. Poplin sure wasn’t.

So, when Poplin woke up in the middle of the night— for whatever night was worth in a space fortress— freezing cold, his first instinct was to find out what Konev had to say about it. He usually slept in the nude, and so crawling out from under his blankets into the blisteringly cold air of his room took some effort. The glass of water on his bedside table had frozen, and the moisture from his breath had frosted into little icy patterns on the wall. It shocked Poplin that he had managed to sleep through it being  _ that _ cold for _ that _ long, but maybe it had been a rapid-onset temperature drop, and he had better get dressed and get ready to evacuate fast, just in case this was the thing that was wrong with the Iserlohn weather system for good.

Konev didn’t answer his phone when Poplin called him, still in the process of pulling on his pants, so Poplin was left to wonder if this temperature drop was an isolated issue in this part of the fortress, or if Konev tended to wear more to bed than Poplin did. 

He shivered as he exited his room, rubbing his hands together for warmth and wincing every time he had to touch a metal door handle. He ran into several other people en route to Konev’s room, all equally confused and cold. 

“You know what’s going on, Poplin?” he was asked.

“Not a clue,” he said, jogging past. “Better ask Cazerne that question.”

To get to Konev’s room, the fastest route was to head across one of the elevated walkways that branched over parts of the open, faux-outdoors, area of the fortress. When Poplin opened the broad door to head inside that climate zone, his question about the temperature being an isolated incident was answered. Fat, cold snowflakes were raining down, the cleverly hidden humidifiers remaining activated, even as the temperature plummeted. The usual circulation of air picked the flakes up and sent them swirling in huge flurries around the open space, landing on everything, but piling up wherever there was a corner. The metal walkways, despite their textured surface, were slippery, and Poplin skidded as he ran, leaving long trails of comically elongated footprints where he passed. 

He at least made it to Konev’s room without falling and smashing his face open, or skidding and slipping out underneath the rails to the ground far below.

Poplin pounded on Konev’s door, covering his hand with his sleeve so that he wouldn’t have to touch the cold surface directly.

“Konev! I know you’re in there!”

He didn’t actually know this, and he supposed after a second that he could be knocking on the door of an empty bedroom, but he was proven right in his exuberance, as a sleepy Konev pulled the door open.

Konev did wear much more pyjamas than Poplin did; he had long thermal underwear on. It wasn’t like it was cold in Iserlohn usually, but maybe the saying was right— a man who wears thermal underwear to bed is a fool every night but one.

“It’s three in the morning,” Konev said by way of greeting.

“How do you not care about this?” Poplin asked, gesturing broadly. “The weather system’s fucked again.”

“Mhmm.” Konev began to shut the door. Poplin stuck his arm in to stop him.

“And you’re not worried?”

“Admiral Yang likes his sleep disturbed even less than I do,” Konev said. “If there is a real problem, I’m sure he’s getting it taken care of as fast as he can. Or he’s told someone else to take care of it, while he stays curled up in his nice, warm bed. Which is exactly what I’m gonna do.”

Poplin made an annoyed face. “Come on, you should see what’s going on outside.”

“What’s going on outside?”

“You have to come see it.”

Konev looked at him for a moment, then sighed. “You’ve already woken me up, I guess.” And he held the door open so that Poplin could come in.

Poplin did, sitting down on the bed while Konev pulled his uniform on directly over his pyjamas. He still took care to fasten his scarf nicely, though. Poplin had pulled the blanket up around himself by the time that Konev was dressed, and he understood why Konev had been so reluctant to leave his bed. It was nice and warm.

“What is it you wanted to show me?” Konev finally asked.

Poplin grinned. “Come on.”

They headed out through the hallways, down the elevator, and then Poplin heaved open the door into the outside area, once again being met with a blast of icy, snow-filled air, though this time they were on the ground level instead of on the slippery walkways.

“Look at this!” Poplin said. “It’s snowing!”

“I’ve seen snow before, Olivier,” Konev said. “You would know.”

“But not in a space. There’s a first time for everything.”

Konev was dismally considering the state of some flowers in a flowerbed, which were poking out of a snowdrift. While his back was turned, Poplin gathered up a handful of snow, holding it behind his back.“I don’t think the greenery is going to survive,” Konev said dryly. “At least, not these ones.”

“What about the farms?”

“Won’t be the end of the world if they have to replant,” Konev said. “It’s not like we can’t get supplies in.”

Poplin nodded and accepted that explanation. 

“Does this weather put you in the mood for going on a hike?” Konev asked, turning to Poplin and smiling a little.

“Nah,” Poplin said. “There’s nowhere good in Iserlohn to hike to. Puts me in the mood for something else, though.”

Konev rolled his eyes. “You have a one track mind, man.”

“That wasn’t even what I was thinking about!” Poplin protested.

“Oh? You’ve decided to branch your tastes out from thinking about women endlessly? I’m sure all the ladies of Iserlohn will be disappointed that you’re abandoning them for some other pursuit.”

“Just temporarily.”

“And what’s got you distracted?”

“This!” And Poplin tossed his hidden snowball directly at Konev’s head. Konev ducked— dogfighting instincts didn’t go away even out of the cockpit— and scooped up his own handful of snow to retaliate. The snowballs volleyed back and forth between them, until Konev managed to get the upper hand and hit Poplin square in the face, the snow entering his open mouth and causing him to cough and spit it out, leaning over, hands on his knees, half-laughing.

“You can’t ever let me win, can you?” Poplin said, wiping the stinging snow off his face.

“You’d be mad if I let you do anything,” Konev pointed out.

“Be different if we were in Spartinians.”

“Last I checked, we weren’t fighting this war with snowballs.”

Poplin’s hand, wiping the last of the snow away from his upper lip, came away with blood on it. “You put a rock in there or something?”

Konev came over to investigate. “Might’ve been a bigger chunk of ice in that one. Sorry,” he said, sounding genuinely apologetic. “I’ll buy you a drink next time we’re out to make up for it.”

“‘S just a scratch,” Poplin said, wiping the blood on his pants.

“I’ve got some ointment in my room.”

“You aren’t gonna let me be all stiff upper lip about it?”

Konev rolled his eyes at that, “If it’s a deep cut, the ladies of Iserlohn won’t find your new scar that attractive.”

“How do you know what the ladies of Iserlohn find attractive?”

“It’s not as though women have a completely alien sensibility.”

“Hunh. Not something I’ve ever been able to figure out.”

“Hasn’t seemed to have stopped you.”

“You’re right about that.” Poplin slung his arm around Konev’s shoulder. “Alright. Save me from being un-handsome, then.”

“You couldn’t even just say ‘ugly’?”

“I’m wounded that you could ever think that someone as handsome as I currently am, and charming, too, could ever become ugly.”

Konev did chuckle at that, and he let Poplin lean on him and gesticulate all through the journey back to Konev’s room.

“Was it worth getting out of bed for?” Poplin asked.

“I suppose so. Though since getting back to sleep will be harder now that my bed is freezing cold, I don’t know if I’ll be thanking you when I have to be awake all day tomorrow.”

“A little sleep deprivation never hurt anybody,” Poplin said as Konev opened his door and let them both in to the small bedroom.

“Sit,” Konev said, gesturing to the bed. Poplin sat. Konev fished around in his desk drawers for a small first aid kit. Once it was located and its contents verified, Konev pulled his desk chair over to sit in front of Poplin, their knees knocking. 

Poplin watched with some amusement, but when Konev pulled out an antiseptic pad and reached towards his face, Poplin grabbed his wrist. “I’m capable of wiping my own nose, you know. Not something that your higher Valkyrie count makes a difference to.”

Konev gently extracted his wrist from Poplin’s grasp. “I feel bad, though.”

“So you’re gonna kiss my boo-boo and make it better?”

Konev didn’t respond to that, so Poplin sighed and let him wipe the stinging alcohol pad across his lip, then follow it up with a gentle dab of ointment. His finger remained on Konev’s lip just a fraction of an instant too long— enough for Poplin to realize that there was something in the air between them. He met Konev’s eyes, questioning, as Konev withdrew his hand. 

Konev seemed stiff for a second. Poplin could feel the tension in his legs, where their knees knocked together. “Can I?” he asked.

“Man…” Poplin said, unable to respond in either direction, so surprised that for the first time in his life, he wasn’t sure what he wanted.

That was enough for Konev, though, and he leaned in, pressing his lips to Poplin’s, then starting to pull back. But Poplin had figured out what he wanted well enough, and he reached up towards Konev’s face, and they were kissing for real, warm and funny and not at all like Poplin had thought it might be— though he wasn’t sure he could say if he had been thinking of it before, or not. 

Konev’s hand was tangling in his hair, wet with melted snow. Poplin grinned and flopped backwards on the bed, tugging Konev along with him. He hit his head on the wall a little, but he didn’t mind.

“Gonna disturb my next door neighbor,” Konev said, but he was just saying things.

“Just think, we’re sparing my next door neighbors the burden of living next to me, for one.”

“Shut up,” Konev said.

“Hah,” Poplin said. “Okay.” 

And Konev was kissing him again, on the cold bed with them both covered in snow, and it was good enough that Poplin forgot about everything else in that moment.


	3. The Earth Is Not a Cold, Dead Place

That first night on Earth, camping out there up in the mountains, Poplin stared into the fire, not really thinking about anything, kinda hoping that there would be babes in the Earth Church compound, but not really expecting it. 

Julian was pensive, occasionally mentioning his thoughts about the history of this place, or what they should be on the lookout for when they arrived. He seemed nervous, but trying not to show it. Poplin had always appreciated that about him— he put on a brave face like nobody else. The kind of kid who would be a good leader one day. He was certainly leading them alright now, even though he glanced between the rest of them, Poplin and Machungo and Konev— the other Konev— for hints and signs when he said something.

Julian went to sleep early, tired by the thin atmosphere, and Machungo followed him, but Poplin wasn’t looking forward to a thin blanket on the ground as a mattress, so he was staying up until he thought he would be so exhausted that he wouldn’t feel uncomfortable as he fell asleep. He poked and prodded the fire, watching the embers go up.

That Konev— and maybe Poplin should have just tried calling him Boris in his head, but old habits died hard— kept checking and re-checking their car crammed tight with supplies and offerings for the Earth Church.

“It’s not a spaceship that’s gonna fly away on its own,” Poplin said, annoyed, after Konev had gotten up to confirm the presence of their water filters, among other things.

“On merchant ships you have to send someone around to check the inventory every once in a while, make sure nothing’s wrong with it,” Konev pointed out. “I’m just doing my job.”

“And you’re giving me the creeps when you do it,” Poplin said. “Don’t you know how to relax?”

“Sure,” Konev said, and sat down by the fire. “I’m relaxed.”

“Your cousin always did crosswords. Guess it took his mind off things.”

“Never was much for words or books,” Konev said. “I think I’d prefer sudoku to crosswords, if I had to pick.”

“Yeah,” Poplin said. He fished around in his bag at his feet. Konev— his Konev— had died with a book of puzzles half finished. Out of sentimentality, or something, Poplin had kept it, though he had never had the heart or patience to fill it out. Still, it was something of a good luck charm, he thought, with that last words Konev had filled in— “funeral”— maybe protecting him against his own. Konev would have told him not to be superstitious, but Poplin couldn’t help it. It was just the way pilots were, sometimes. You do the right rituals before you go out, you don’t die. Glancing through Konev’s crossword book now meant that he’d make it out of the Earth Church with everything they needed to find, Poplin thought.

“Thirteen down,” Poplin said. “‘But where are the blank of yesteryear?’”

“How many letters?”

“Five. Starts and ends with an ‘S.’”

“Stars?” Konev offered.

“Mmm, nah, conflicts with four across— think that one’s ‘widow’— man, this is a depressing one.”

“No clue,” Konev said. “Like I said, more of a numbers man, myself.”

“Yeah,” Poplin said. “And I’d rather not sit around and look at puzzles.”

“That’s fair.”

“Keep busy enough without ‘em.” He tucked the book of puzzles back into his bag. 

He stared into the fire some more. With nothing real to distract him, melancholy was the prominent emotion, especially whenever he caught a glimpse of Konev doing whatever the hell he was doing on the other side of the fire. Picking threads off a scrap piece of fabric one by one and burning them.

He needed to find a girl in the Earth Church. Maybe he’d bring her out with her when they left. It was a fun fantasy, one that kept him occupied as he lay on his thin blanket in his tent, the rocks of Earth poking him in the back.

The next morning, Poplin woke up to find a fine dusting of snow over their mountain campsite. The flakes swirled like ashes when a gust of wind knocked them off the tops of the rocks.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't gotten much of a chance to write about Poplin and Konev yet in other settings yet, so I hope that I did them justice here haha. I might at some point go back and give this a thorough edit b/c I'm not totally satisfied with it, but I wanted to get my Christmas gift out on Christmas itself haha.
> 
> "Ou sont les neiges d'antan" (where are the snows of yesteryear) is a famous refrain from a poem by Francois Villon, which is fairly famously quoted in the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. In that novel, which is about WWII bombers pilots, there is a character named Snowden who was killed. The main character, Yossarian, reminds everyone of Snowden by misquoting the poem-- "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" I figured it was appropriate here anyway, though I am certainly no Joseph Heller. Highly recommend Catch-22 btw. Great book.
> 
> I really hope you enjoy this secret santa gift! It was fun to think about and write. Have an excellent Christmas and an excellent New Year.
> 
> Thank you very much to Em for the beta read!  
> I can be found on twitter @natsinator and on tumblr as @javert. My other writing is at gayspaceopera.carrd.co


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